Second Spring! It’s YOUR time!
As Mary Oliver said in her famous poem, “The Summer Day,” “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” As I approached my 50th birthday, this question spun around and around in my head and a voice kept repeating, “It's time, it's time!!”
“Time for what?” I thought. “Sigh.”
As the day came and went, the answer began to reveal itself. You are 50. Time is not infinite. If there are things you want to do, then now is the time to start.
After 25+ years working as a professional in the social profit sector, and receiving some life-altering coaching myself, I decided to embark on a journey to become a personal development coach. I was unsettled by this throw-caution-to-the-wind decision, but half-way through one of the courses, I had an overwhelming, solid, confident feeling that coaching was my calling. Did it matter that I was in my early 50’s? Was it too late?
Over the next two years, I completed my training and became a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC). I put out my shingle and started Jo Davis Coaching and Facilitation. As I was developing my “niche” a wise coach asked me who I was drawn to and who was coming to me. I realized that all of my clients were women, just like me, in their 50’s and 60’s, experiencing a new kind of phase in their lives. We all had so many uncanny similarities: children launching (who am I now?), desire for more meaning and giving back (generativity), needing a shift in perspective or a new career, fear of ageism, and increasing health concerns. I got more curious and began a conversation about this with a young friend. She said that in Traditional Chinese Medicine, when a woman has finished her childbearing years and enters menopause, her life force or chi energy moves upwards to her heart and mind. This gives rise to a new, refreshed life phase or a "Second Spring.”
This knowledge has been around for thousands of years. The following is an excerpt from The Yellow Emperor's Classic Medicine, a famous book written in China around 2600 BC.
At seven times seven a woman’s heavenly dew wanes;
the pulse of her Conception channel decreases.
The Qi that dwelt in the baby’s palace moves upward into her heart,
and her wisdom is deepened (Ni, 1995, as cited in Nelson, 2019).
This poetic way of explaining the mental and physiological changes that occur during menopause made perfect sense to me. This is what my clients were describing: the presence of a new phase, a letting go, an opportunity for renewal and navigating liminal space. I began to delve more deeply into this idea of a new adult phase of life for women.
As I read and listened, my thoughts got a little clearer. In our culture we have markers or signposts for women: daughter, young woman, mother, grandmother...but there is a missing marker. Between mother and grandmother, in our 50's and 60's and maybe 70's there is a phase that is discernibly different. It can feel robust, healthy, sexy, wise and knowledgeable. Unfortunately, in our western culture women often feel the opposite: invisible, washed up, “over the hill,” and in decline. My thoughts were that we needed a mindset shift: reclaim and redefine this phase and throw off the negative stereotypes our culture has given it. It is and should be a time when wisdom and experience are celebrated and deeply held values lived out with intention and purpose. As Gaily Sheehy said in her book, Sex and the Passionate Life,
A seasoned woman is spicy, she has marinated in life experience. She is at the peak of her influence and power. She is committed to living fully and passionately in the second half of her life, despite failures and false starts (2006).
This time is and can be a time of rebirth and renewal and giving back…indeed a Second Spring.
And enter the great Pandemic. While it has been an extraordinarily difficult time to live through, it has given us pause to reflect on who and what is important in our lives. Some folks have made significant changes in relationships, careers, and where they live. It has caused people to take stock of what they want in the future. Women in their Second Spring and living through the pandemic have a perfect storm of circumstances to redefine themselves and what they want. People have realized that life is short and if there are things to change; they need to take action.
Coaching can be a great choice for women at this time. We work as a partner with clients to create brave spaces to explore what is needed to move forward. Coaches create trusting relationships, ask powerful questions, listen deeply to what is being expressed out loud or in the energy of the space. Many times, coaching allows clients to question limiting assumptions about themselves and lives. Together new mindsets are examined and carved out. Existing old belief systems are replaced with resonant ones that support forward motion and weed out the loud self-critic. Coaches create systems of accountability and between sessions encourage further exploration of topics. Clients take full ownership for what they want and move forward with the coach walking alongside them. Coaching really does shorten the time needed for change and helps ensure a smooth transition.
Coaches ask powerful questions like:
What and who are you becoming?
What are you letting go of?
What are you holding on to?
What is at stake for you right now?
What do you want?
Is it time for you to cast off old limiting thoughts and mindsets? Is it time for you to renew, refresh and move long-held goals and dreams into action? Are you ready to claim your Second Spring?
As the voice in my head said, “It's time. If there are things you want to do, then now is the time to start.” There is no rehearsal. This is your life. Your one wild and precious life.
The Summer Day
-Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down --
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
(Oliver, 2017, p. 316)
References
Nelson, J. (2019, December 17). Menopause: A second spring. Power Health Chinook. https://powerhealthchinook.ca/menopause-second-spring/
Ni, Maoshing. (1995). The yellow emperor's classic of medicine: A new translation of the neijing suwen with commentary (revised edition). Shambala.
Oliver, Mary. (2017). Devotions: The selected poems of Mary Oliver. Penguin Random House.
Sheehy, Gail. (2006). Sex and the seasoned woman: Pursuing the passionate life. Random House Inc.